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You can install Connect, manually!

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spex

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spex Newbie

spex

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INSTALLATION

Ok, here's how I got it to work. Before that though, BACKUP THE SS LIBRARY just in case!

1. download and run from

Automatic software update

I got Sonicstage ???????????????????????????? when I did.

2. the easy way: if you have WinRAR/Winzip installed right click on the file and select to extract somewhere. Then skip to step 4. If not, here's the hard way:

go to C:\Documents and Settings\%PROFILE NAME%\Local Settings\Temp and search for the folder that contains the files extracted from the archive. This is a hidden folder so you have to enable the option from Tools->Folder Options->View->Show Hidden... Copy this folder (%FOLDER NAME%) anywhere else.

3. go to %FOLDER NAME%\files.

4. Run ConfigSet.exe

5. Right Click on CONNECT Player Language Pack.msi and select install

6. Right Click on CONNECT Player.msi and follow the installation instructions. That's it!

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gr00vy0ne Newbie

gr00vy0ne

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I actually got Connect Player installed on my system thanks to that link. If you download that UK update manually then you can extract the files and run the Connect Player setup and it installs very quickly!

And no, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support non-A3000/A1000/A608 devices yet. It's not recognizing my stuff. At least we can get a feel for the player itself in terms of interface, speed, and stability (with importing).

It's definitely straightforward and light on features. I like that it supports Japanese characters without any registry tweaks.

I'll have more impressions later today after I get off work. :ol_biggrin:

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Guest Stuge

Guest Stuge

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I actually got Connect Player installed on my system thanks to that link. If you download that UK update manually then you can extract the files and run the Connect Player setup and it installs very quickly!

I'll have some of my own impressions later today after I get off work.  :ol_biggrin:

R u able to install connect player with that 13.1mb file

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willykyu Newbie

willykyu

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It's definitely straightforward and light on features. I like that it supports Japanese characters without any registry tweaks.

UNICOOOOOODEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!???????? is that what you mean!? great news!!! too bad you can't throw your stuff to HD5 nor PSP! but great news!

PS: I installed Connect player too from the update file. I'm trying it right now

Edited by willykyu
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imagine_ Newbie

imagine_

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I will try to install it and play with it, even though it doesn't support any devices yet.

UPDATE: Doesn't work :(, it says target software module is not installed. Isn't there someone who can copy the installation from the cd and host it somewhere?

Edited by imagine
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gr00vy0ne Newbie

gr00vy0ne

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I will try to install it and play with it, even though it doesn't support any devices yet.

UPDATE: Doesn't work :(, it says target software module is not installed. Isn't there someone who can copy the installation from the cd and host it somewhere?

I assume you read my original post...?

You CANNOT install it directly from the download. You must extract the files from the 13MB download. To extract the files you must you an extraction program first.

I used WinRAR. If you have WinRAR installed, you simply right click on the file and tell it to extract it to a directory. Once extracted, you navigate to the "files" directory and look for the "installer" subdirectory. Inside there you will find the Connect Player.msi installer file. You should be able to run that by itself. There's also a Connect Player Language Pack.msi file you can install. I'm not sure what it does exactly but I figure someone smart here will find that out.

Once installed, you simply run it. You may experience a javascript error screen the first time you run it. It seems to go away after the first time you run it.

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Guest Stuge

Guest Stuge

Posted
Posted (edited)

I`M able to play some mp3s with it

i`m still woking with it

U can also import cd in atrac file or any other but the thing i`m unable to covert my mp3 to atrac.

any ideas about it........

Also it takes more time to import a cd

edit2

As it is able to detect my cd drive soo i can burn cds(in atrac format) with that

& as i have D-NE900.(BUT IT IS OF NO USE AS SS IS ASLO THERE)

EDIT3

someone told us that there is no restore tool but it is imbeded in the connect program folder

-First open program folder of connect player then click on "OjbSir.exe"

Edited by Stuge
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quantum Newbie

quantum

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Hello! I installed the player and noticed that scrolling through the songs was a bit laggy and so decided to see if the program stored the song database in some xml file. I instead found some interesting files in the "Scripts" directory with what looks like a skin resource directory. In fact all the images of the parts of the player seem to be in this file "window-background.png". It's really nice to know that the player is skinnable. :) At least I think it's cool.

There was an interesting line in the xml files in the directory though:

<document xmlns="http://www.kinoma.com/fskin/1" href="x-id://commandTarget">

Makes me wonder if kinoma just only make the skin for the connect player or designed the whole player entirely.

So far the player has hung on me once and that was when I was changing input languages. It didn't happen again though so i'm not sure what happened. As a first impression it's not a very polished piece of software but it looks like it has a lot of promise.

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Beethovenian Newbie

Beethovenian

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It doesn't work for me. It seems to install fine, creating directory and icons (though it doesn't ask me to reboot), but when I try to launch it, it just hangs on a blank screen. If I close it and try again, it doesn't do anything, even after reboot.

As for the language pack, it seems to install manual and help files.

Never mind, I saw Castar's post in the AVforums and it works now. What I didn't do was to run ConfigSet.exe before installing.

Edited by Beethovenian
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Guest Stuge

Guest Stuge

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Beethovenian-Install both language pack & connect installer again(first uninstall it) .After unstalling reboot ur pc .then install connect & lang pack ,then again reboot pc.

HOPe this works for u.......

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Castar Newbie

Castar

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I'm copying the contents of that post to the first post in this topic. Thank you for registering here and helping, Castar. It pains me to see this back and forth notion between AVForums and ATRACLife because it's difficult for everyone to be on the same page. More of you should come over here, we won't bite. :P

will do, will do... :ol_lol:

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indeego Newbie

indeego

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Did anyone of you encounter the following problem?

I just imported a track from CD at 256 kbit Atrac3Plus.

I checked under "Properties" -> "Rights" what I can do with this file and - its almost nothing:

Licens Begins: Never

Licens expires: Expired

Remaining Audio CD Burns:0

Remaining Transfer Count:0

( I tried various CDs )

Very odd, isn't it?

Edit:

I imported the .oma-file in SonicStage, there is no problem with the Rights-information

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gr00vy0ne Newbie

gr00vy0ne

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Sony should just get in contact with Kurisu and have members of this board beta test their software before they release it. We all genuinenly want Connect (and even the venerable SonicStage) to succeed so that we can have an alternative choice of software to use with what we consider very well designed portable digital audio hardware. My early impressions are that Connect Player is moving in the right direction but the implementation isn't very polished yet.

They should call it "Limited Connect Player" since it doesn't connect to a majority of their devices.

Issues so far (for me)

- The pseudo unicode support was such a tease. It can load/read my non-English audio files but it won't play them. Good job Sony!

- High memory/CPU usage. The tinyhttp.exe process takes up way too much memory, it doesn't seem like it can be disabled, and there's nothing in the interface that tells you what it's doing. 180MB of memory usage + 180MB of VM usage makes no sense for a simple audio player/transfer tool.

- The Connect Player doesn't handle missing or removed files in the Library very well. Instead of telling you that the file is missing, it just says there's an error. Even SonicStage asks you to look for the file. There should be some sort of visual indicator that a file is missing and it should ask you what you want to do about it.

- Lack of support for previous ATRAC devices. This one is huge! Sony shouldn't be trying to alienate their existing customers. Yes, we already have SonicStage 3.3 but they should be trying to unify their product lines to use a standard interface. SonicStage 3.3 supports my MusicClip (2000) all the way up to my NW-E507 (2005). I don't see what the technical issue is with adding such support to Connect Player and I don't see the business sense of excluding "legacy" players. What's worse is the confusion with the NW-E5xx/4xx and the NW-A6xx since they basically look the same but currently "use different software" to operate.

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Ishiyoshi Newbie

Ishiyoshi

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Pretty sure. It told me that I needed that in order for it to operate, and said to uninstall Connect.

You get OpenMG Secure Module 4.3.00.08302 (the latest version) when you install SonicStage 3.3. I have attached the module separately at MDCF. So, hop over and run a search within "Software" section for the attachment.

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gr00vy0ne Newbie

gr00vy0ne

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Ok, here's some retarded news...I can now get my non-English (aka Japanese) music to play properly.

If I load up Connect Player using Applocale set to Japanese then it magically plays my Japanese MP3s. The interface remains in English but now it can play most of my MP3s now. Of course, if I set the Applocale to Japanese then Connect Player won't play any songs that have accented characters.

The issue really isn't the files themselves but rather the directories that they're in. I have most of my directories sorted iTunes style with artist folder and album sub-folders. So, for instance, Michael Bublé has his own folder but Connect Player can't play any of the songs in his folders it if I have Applocale set to Japanese. I have to switch back to regular English if I want to play the songs. Likewise, if I want to play songs by HOME MADE 家族 then I have to switch to Japanese.

This is extremely disappointing. The two major players (iTunes and Windows Media Player) handle unicode files way better. This is a glaring issue that needs to be resolved in the next version.

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EZero Newbie

EZero

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You get OpenMG Secure Module 4.3.00.08302 (the latest version) when you install SonicStage 3.3. I have attached the module separately in MDCF. So, hop over and run a search within "Software" section for the attachment.

Thank you very much. I've got it working. It's not that bad, I like it more than SS. The only thing that is slow is importing from CDs, but everything else is rather intuitive, and easy to use, IMO.

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kaledi Newbie

kaledi

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I too have managed to install the connect player so thanks for all the pointers and intructions.

Some comments and questions.

1. Is this the full installation - are all the components/modules present?

2. The connect store points to the US site not the UK one - interesting

3. You can't seem to be able to rip a CD into the lossless codec - can anyone confirm this

4. You cannot convert file format/bitrates - Can anyone confirm this?

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Ishiyoshi Newbie

Ishiyoshi

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If I load up Connect Player using Applocale set to Japanese then it magically plays my Japanese MP3s. The interface remains in English but now it can play most of my MP3s now. Of course, if I set the Applocale to Japanese then Connect Player won't play any songs that have accented characters.

The issue really isn't the files themselves but rather the directories that they're in. I have most of my directories sorted iTunes style with artist folder and album sub-folders. So, for instance, Michael Bublé has his own folder but Connect Player can't play any of the songs in his folders it if I have Applocale set to Japanese. I have to switch back to regular English if I want to play the songs. Likewise, if I want to play songs by HOME MADE 家族 then I have to switch to Japanese.

This is extremely disappointing. The two major players (iTunes and Windows Media Player) handle unicode files way better. This is a glaring issue that needs to be resolved in the next version.

I do share your frustration. The need to employ AppLocale to playback Japanese music tracks (in my case) defeats the idea of being a true unicode player. I hope this issue will be resolved with the next update.

The \Program Files\Sony\CONNECT Player\Scripts folder shows that the Connect Player skin is made up of just two image files. Edit them correctly and you can change the skin. For example here i've just changed everything purple into red. 

post-6287-1111734074_thumb.jpg

Mein Gott! The red scheme is burning my retina. :ol_bah: Nonetheless, great effort... :ol_groucho:

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gr00vy0ne Newbie

gr00vy0ne

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I do share your frustration. The need to employ AppLocale to playback Japanese music tracks (in my case) defeats the idea of being a true unicode player. I hope this issue will be resolved with the next update.

Kurisu, feel free to share this thread with your Sony contact. They should know that the community is behind them and we want them to succeed in releasing a quality product.

Obviously, their most vocal supporters will be people who are more "technically inclined" and many of us seem to be bi- or multilingual users who influence other buyers. Regardless, no modern program should be without unicode support especially in this day and age. Heck, their own hardware supports multilingual characters while the software doesn't. That's a serious disCONNECT!

As of right now, I simply can't recommend Sony products to a lot of my friends since most of them are multilingual and simply want a product that "just works". All my friends are enamored with my Sony gear and are tempted to buy...until I explain to them how they transfer songs onto the devices. Sony is going to need to switch to the User Experience first instead of the Hardware first otherwise no matter what they do, it will just be a hack.

When does Connect 2.0...err....2.1 come out? :ol_smile:

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Ascariss Newbie

Ascariss

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I managed to install it with no problem during and after so far.

I used the OpenMG Ishiyoshi posted on MDCF since I don't have SS3.3 installed, nor do i want it. I made it scan my pc for the mp3 files. It took awhile too, I have roughly 2000 mp3s on my pc and it took well over an hour to import them all into the player. The program doesn't run that fast on my PC, I am on a 600mhz pentium 3 though, so that could be the case.

CPU usage is around 1-2% for me, and the mem usage is roughly 55megs.

I tried opening SS3.2 at the same time, but it says to close connect player before opening SS interestinigly enough.

edit:

ya CPU and mem usage is off the scale when I go to open it. :ol_blankstare:

Edited by Ascariss
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Beethovenian Newbie

Beethovenian

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OK, now I have toyed a little with this player and can give my initial impressions. Connect Player by default doesn't add copy protection, so that's something nice. But that's basically all I can say of positive about it (well, I actually liked the fact it supports metadata for conductor, orchestra, singer, even things like mood). For the rest, it's a huge disappointment, a software to make me thing SonicStage is great.

Of course, many of the stability and resource usage problems may be due to a bad installation. But the player seems very capricious when scanning folders, is slow in general and takes forever to shut itself down (it closes, but you hear the hard-drive spinning for a long time after that, and it doesn't let you open SonicStage until it has completely closed). Again, that may be due to installation problems, since we're not supposed to use this software anyway.

The biggest problem is that Connect is many steps backwards from SonicStage in the interface department. I like in general how it organizes things on the main window, but some controls are weird. For instance, if you select a track, it will first let you edit its title, instead of playing it. You need to click twice to have it played, but the first time gives you the editing option, which may very well confuse you.

Editing the metadata is a nightmare compared to SonicStage. By the way, let me say that SonicStage is one of the very best software players to edit track information I know. Certainly better than iTunes. Connect doesn't let me edit a whole album information or artist, doesn't let me go track by track by simply pressing the down button after editing one track, doesn't let me add album art for a whole album at once. Everything seems to require opening a popup properties window for individual tracks (in SonicStage, I simply select an album art in Windows Explorer and drag it to the album I want; in Connect I have to do it using the "add album art" function in properties). Worse still, the properties popup doesn't have "next" and "back" buttons that facilitate editing a sequence of tracks, as SonicStage has. And when you insert a CD, instead of simply adding track information from CDDB to the tracks listed, it displays the CDDB popup, even if there's only one set of information for that album. By the way, Connect keeps accessing the CDDB database periodically, regardless of having or no a new CD in the drive.

And now the most ridiculous thing: Connect is not gapless. Tracks it rips continue to be gapless if encoded with Atrac, but you'll need SonicStage to confirm it. The albums ripped with SonicStage that I imported to Connect played with very noticeable gaps during transitions.

Edited by Beethovenian
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Guest Stuge

Guest Stuge

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Posted (edited)

Tell me if u r able to convert ur mp3s to atrac format (after importing mp3s)in connect software.as i`m unable to find that feature .I was able to do that in sonic stage......

Edited by Stuge
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